Container Gardening – Preparing to Dig In
When I decided last week to start a garden, I knew I wouldn’t get it all set up and planted in a week. I did, however, think I would get at least one thing planted. Life and mother nature had other ideas.
FRESH VEGGIES
After our trip to the park yesterday morning, the kids and I went to our local fruit/veggie market which has just recently reopened for the season. Woohoo! In addition to a variety of fruits, vegetables and yummy snacks, they have an area with flowers, herbs and starter vegetables.
I always get confused by those maps that show you what to grow according to your zone. Instead, I Googled what vegetables grow in partial shade in the Pacific Northwest. I checked professional nursery sites and personal blogs and looked for what overlapped and used those as my starting point.
The kids wanted to grab one of everything, but I decided I would start with romaine lettuce. Everything I read says lettuce should grow fine in partial shade, this is the right time to plant it and it works for the climate in our area.
SURPRISE GARDEN ADDITION
I still haven’t bought or built a planter box, but I do have the container from the poor chrysanthemum. Or so I thought. Being dried out, the bush is still rather bulky and pokey, so I grabbed my garden gloves and little clippers. I began clipping away and what to my wondering eyes should appear but little groupings of green leaves.
My first thought was “weeds!”, but upon closer inspection, I began to think these might be new chrysanthemum buds. I did some looking online, closely inspecting pictures and found a nursery website that talked about mums in the spring.
If I’m not mistaken (and it is a definite possibility that I am), I think nature has found a way to continue on despite the blackness of my thumb. It’s been sitting on the sunny section of our back deck for a while now so even though I’ve been neglecting it (I thought it was dead after all), it has been getting rain and sunshine during a fairly mild winter.
So instead of digging out the chrysanthemum and planting the romaine lettuce, I cut the dead parts back as best I could and watered it. This time around I will actually pay attention to the moisture of the soil and see what happens.
Of course, this means I need to find a new home for the lettuce. Hopefully, the little lettuce guys we bought can survive a few more days (or week) in their little plastic tray. I set them in the kitchen window where they will receive indirect light and hopefully be visible enough that I remember to keep them damp.
HOMEMADE GUACAMOLE
Continuing on this little gardening kick, I haven’t gotten a mandarin tree yet, but after making some guacamole with
Peanut this morning, I did decide to see if I can get an avocado seed to sprout. I’m going with the usual toothpick and water glass method for this seed. It’s been a long time since I’ve attempted this (total fail last time) so I did look up what to do. For the record:
- Remove pit from the avocado and wash.
- Stick 3-4 toothpicks toward the top of the avocado (narrower end) and place over a water glass
- Fill the glass with enough water to submerge the bottom inch of the seed
- Add water as needed until the seed sprouts
While looking for the above, I ran across someone who had better luck putting their avocado seed in soil instead. Instead of using toothpicks and water, they split and removed the hard outer brown shell of the seed and put the pit, wide end down into the dampened soil. I’ll be trying this method with my next avocado pit.
Assuming I can get one of the avocado sprouting methods to work, I will be keeping the tree in my dining room. Our Northwest climate is a bit too chilly for me to move it outside.
NEXT
While my garden isn’t quite as far along as I had wanted, some progress has been made. Goals for next week are to get the lettuce transplanted into an actual container they can grow in and, attempt the soil and pot method with an avocado seed.
Previously – Gardening With a Tiny Yard
Next up – Container Gardening – Take 2
